And Then There Were Three
by heyevans
Summary: AU: Sisterfic - Claire Winchester was such an efficient mix of her brothers that if it weren't for some pretty pathetic character defects she would probably be considered the perfect human being.
1. Chapter 1

**Hola amigos! So I have a penchant for SPN sisterfics and genderbending and um there aren't like any good fics out there for either so basically I thought I'd try my hand? This particular story will be a sisterfic, and it will be less of a plot-based story and more a collection of drabbles and stuff. Anyway, hope you enjoy!**

**TIMESTAMP: PILOT**

California was warm. Even when it was cold, it was warm. The Winchesters moved around like crazy and as such were adaptable to pretty much any kind of weather, but Claire wondered if Sam had lost that adaptability at Stanford. Maybe he had turned into a sun-kissed Californian, swapping flip-flops for Uggs the moment it hit 70 degrees. Well – probably not Uggs, unless he had settled on a different sexuality while he was away. Hey, they were comfortable.

Dean was climbing in through the window, but Claire opted for more manageably picking the lock of the front door. As such, when she had found her way into the living room, the entire house had already been woken up. _So much for subtlty… _

"I love the smurfs," Dean was saying to a blonde girl who must have been Sam's girlfriend.

"I love the sexual innuendos," Claire drawled.

"Claire, you too?" Sam groaned.

"You're no fun," Dean said, and then turned back to The Girlfriend. "You know, I gotta tell you – _you _are com_pletely _out of my brother's league."

"Just – let me put something on," she said.

"No, no! No, I wouldn't dream of it," he looked her up and down. "Seriously."

"I'm really sorry, he's an idiot," Claire said.

"You wound me," Dean responded offhandedly. "Anyway, Jess, we gotta borrow your boyfriend here to talk about some private family business, but, uh, nice meeting you."

"No!" Sam snapped. "Anything you wanna say to me, you can say in front of her."

"That was a serious nice-guy move," Claire said. "Wow, I am one proud big sis. But the thing is… dad's on a trip and he hasn't been home in a few days."

"So what? He stumble in sooner or later."

"No – dad's on a _hunting _trip and he hasn't been home in a few days."

That caught his attention. "Jess, excuse us," he said tightly. "We have to go outside."


	2. Chapter 2

**TIMESTAMP: SEASON 3, EPISODE 9 - MALLEUS MALEFICARUM**

Claire grinned, tasting victory as she finally was able to get her cell phone between her two fingers. It was awkward, and it required the use of bizarre, weak finger muscles, but she managed to shimmy it out of the crack between the door and the seat.

She slid her newly rescued phone into her back pocket and exited the Impala, breathing in the night air for a moment, knowing that Sam and Dean would probably be arguing over the latest demon development when she entered their motel room.

"I wanted to talk to the oldest, but I guess you'll do. Think you can carry a message, blondie?" speak of the devil.

"Ruby," Claire said. "It's nice to meet you. You know, in a situation where nobody is in immediate danger of dying. And you do realize that you're blonde too, right?"

"I noticed, yeah," Ruby said. "Meat suits take a while to get used to, though. You forget these things."

"Is it true?" Claire blurted. "I mean, that you were human."

Ruby paused. "It was back when the plague was big. All demons were once human, you know – or at least, all the ones I've met were."

"How?" Claire asked. "How does it happen? How do you get from human to demon?" her brain was whirring away at a million miles per hour, and if she was truthful she would admit that one of her first thoughts was: _can you get demon powers without becoming a demon?_

Because that would be pretty damn cool.

"In hell," Ruby says. "Well – you can imagine. It gets pretty rough down there. You forget yourself."

It wasn't difficult to see where this was going.

"Sooner or later your humanity burns away until you're left like… well, hell makes you forget who you are. That's why demons aren't like you and me," Ruby finished.

"And why are you like me? Why aren't you like a demon?"

"I don't know. I remember what it's like being human," Ruby said. "Don't ask me why. I'm just different."

Claire frowned.

"Dean's going to hell."

"Yes."

"There's no way to stop it. You were lying about that," it wasn't a question.

"Yes."

"He'll become a demon."

"Eventually."

"So what do you want?" Claire asked. "Why did you tell Sam that you could save Dean?"

"I need your help," Ruby said. "Yours and Dean's."

"What could you possibly need our help with?"

"Sam."

"What about him?"

"The way Dean stopped that demon, it was pretty tough," Ruby said. "Sam's almost there, but not quite. And you – you're more objective than both of them put together. We need to get him ready. For when Dean's dead and gone. So he can fight this war on his own."

"I do exist you know," Claire said dryly. "He'll still have me."

"Yeah, for how long? Check out Sam's track record. It's bad overall, of course, but practically every chick he's come in contact with has died violently," Ruby pointed out. "And anyway, Sam's different. He's… special. You can't do all the things he can."

"Like what?" Claire pushed. Ruby just smiled.

"Guess we'll have to find out," she said, and turned to leave.

"Hold on – Ruby," Claire called after her. Ruby stopped and turned, looking a little annoyed.

"What?"

"You've got a vagina of death, too," Claire pointed out. "And seriously, you said you wanted me to carry a message. You expect me to tell Dean that he's going to hell, one hundred percent for sure?"

"Like I said, you're objective," Ruby said. "You'll spill the beans eventually. And yes, I do possess a vagina of death, but I'm also a demon, and considerably less vulnerable than you are."

"True," Claire said. "All the same, watch your back. It'll be nice having a girl pop in every once in a while."

Ruby looked taken aback. "I just told you that I lied about being able to save Dean and you want to be all – _buddy buddy_?"

Claire shrugged. "I'm objective."


	3. Chapter 3

**hey, i c u guise. u shud review and make a girl happy**

_**fact of the day: did you know that your earlobes are in line with your nipples?**_

**TIMESTAMP: POST SEASON 4, EPISODE 10: HEAVEN AND HELL**

She was on a hard, dirty floor, curled up on her side, blood dripping from the corner of her mouth into a steadily growing pool. Her body ached.

"I apologize for any damage done to your body. Had you not fought back perhaps Uriel would have been less… intense," someone said.

She heaved herself into a sitting position, tensing her muscles to keep herself from shaking.

"Castiel?" she croaked. "What…"

He stepped over to help her up. "We completed all necessary examinations while you were unconscious. You are free to leave," he paused. "I think."

"That sounded kind of rape-ey," Claire grumbled. "I don't remember… _anything_."

"Like I said, Uriel gets intense," Cas repeated.

"What happened?" she drew away from him, coming to her senses enough to be suspicious. He looked at her.

"We needed to test some theories. Or rather, gain enough information to _form _some theories," he told her.

"Theories about what?" she asked. Mentally she did a check. Her gun was gone, but she could feel her knife pressing into her calf. Not that it would be much use against an angel – but it was comforting to have it there.

He didn't talk for a while. "I can't tell you," he said finally.

"Like hell you can't," she spat. "You beat the crap out of me and… and… _completed examinations, _and you won't even tell me why? Maybe you aren't as decent a guy as we thought."

He blinked. "I would like to tell you, but heaven has rules. Here, I can take you back to Sam and Dean."

He raised a hand to touch her shoulder, but she smacked it away.

"Not until I've got answers," she snapped.

Again, he was silent for many seconds. "I can't tell you much," he sighed eventually. And you can't let on that you know any of this – _to anyone_. Not to the angels, not to your brothers, no one."

"Fine," she said immediately.

"Don't _lie _to me," Castiel said. "_You will not tell anyone, or I will not tell you._"

Claire hesitated. "Fine. I won't."

He seemed to accept that this time she was telling the truth, because he looked away as if trying to figure out how to string words together.

"Sam is special," was what he came up with.

"So it's been said," Claire said dryly.

"But Dean is special, too," Cas continued. "It's said… the righteous man who begins it, is the only one who can finish it."

"Well that's sufficiently ominous. What does it have to do with me?" Claire asked.

"That's exactly it. How can it be possible that both Dean and Sam have such destinies, while you are nothing? Ordinary?"

"Thanks."

"So we… touched you," Cas said. Claire's eyebrows shot up.

"Great, so you did rape me?" stabbing him with that knife was sounding like a real satisfying option as time wore on.

"No, we touched your soul," Castiel explained.

"Oh, well that's okay then," she said sarcastically.

"We needed to know if there was anything Written there," Cas said. "Something we may have missed, something that wasn't foretold."

"And was there anything?" Claire asked icily.

"Yes," Cas replied.

"Oh yeah? What?"

"That I can't tell you," he pursed his lips. "Even if I did, you wouldn't understand."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence."

"It's time you went back," he said abruptly. "I can heal you, so Sam and Dean won't ask questions."

"Yeah, I'll come back after being missing for hours, but it's okay, they won't be suspicious, I've been _healed_."

He shot her a look, but place two fingers on her forehead, and instantly she felt a hundred times better.

"It would be best if you forgot this ever happened," Castiel advised.

_Fat chance, _she thought, but nodded to humour him. His hand moved to her shoulder and she was gone.


	4. Chapter 4

**Holy wow this one's long. I expect monetary compensation. Also, I cannot be held responsible for brain damage acquired trying to figure out what exactly I was on while I wrote this.**

**fact of the day: did you know that there's a town in Austria called Fucking?**

**TIMESTAMP: POST JOHN'S DISSAPPEARANCE**

The first few weeks were rough.

She had been trained, of course – trained just as hard as the boys, so she had an equal set of skills. But training is no substitute for experience, and she had close to none of that. Sure, she'd been taken on a couple salt and burns, and every once in a while something bigger would happen and she'd get dragged into it, but for the most part, she got stuck with research duty.

She knew why. Although she only had the tiniest, vaguest, possibly-made-up memory of her mother, she'd seen pictures and she knew that she was the spitting image of Mary. Dean resembled her, too, but he was a boy, so it could be easily overlooked. John looked at her and saw his wife, and he wasn't going to let his wife die twice, and so she was kept out of harm's way as much as humanly possible.

Dean had never understood or even acknowledged this, so the second John had taken off he'd expected Claire to jump right in and get elbow-deep in the supernatural right with him. And she tried, she really did, and she didn't let Dean see that she was struggling, or Sam, either, when they picked him up, but she was. She was constantly sore and tired, and the ghosts started to give her nightmares. They were real now, not something she knew existed but never dealt with – and they scared her.

Hell if she would tell anyone, though.

The term 'laugh in the face of danger' is a popular one, and it's easy to understand why. Once you look at a situation through a more humorous lens, everything becomes more manageable. And so it all changed in the tiny town of Glitter, Idaho.

"What the hell kind of name is _Glitter_?" Dean grumbled as the car thundered past the sign that read '_Welcome to Glitter! Population: 637'._

"Maybe they manufacture sparkles here," Sam suggested halfheartedly.

"Well, they also manufacture mysterious murder-suicides," Claire said, and she tossed a bundle of newspapers onto the dashboard. "This article makes six in the past two months."

"Found any patterns so far?" Dean asked.

"Yeah, actually – the suicide was always a male in his twenties. No connection with those they took with them, but I figure we should prod a little. Maybe they're all enemies or something," she shrugged.

"It's worth checking out," Sam agreed.

But as they tracked down family and friends of the victims, they could not find a connection between the relationships the suicides had with the murdered. The first was a bartender who poisoned a client and then himself. The second was a police officer who shot a criminal and then ate a bullet himself. The third was a grad student who threw his girlfriend in the trunk and drove off a bridge. The other three had similar such fates.

And so after a day of hoofing it around the entire town – it was small enough that they didn't want to drive everywhere – they found a cute little bed and breakfast to crash in. Sam went to take a shower, and so she and Dean decided they would pop in on the little grocery store down the street.

"Literally everything in this town is adorable," Claire observed as they passed a white picket fence enclosing a pastelly garden and a brick house.

"I don't like it," Dean grumbled.

"Don't be so - "

But suddenly, without warning, he lunged for her and threw her roughly to the side.

"Ow – _Dean!_" but he was advancing on her now. He grabbed her shoulders and started pushing her backwards into the fence…

"Are you trying to _impale _me?" she shrieked. No response.

Oh. _Oh._ She brought her knee up into his solar plexus and as he doubled over, pulled out her gun. Pointing it at him triggered no response, he merely straightened and moved to attack again.

"This is going to hurt me more than it will hurt you!" she said, and as he went to attack her again she whipped the gun around and cracked it across his head. Instantly he dropped like a sack of rocks.

"Or maybe not," she put her gun away and tried to haul him over her shoulder, but he had at least thirty pounds on her and it took several minutes to even sling him across her, let alone start moving. But when she finally managed to, a flicker in the shadows behind the brick house caught her attention. She swiveled her head to get a better look, but what she saw didn't exactly reveal much.

From the way the body was built it was definitely a man, but he wore a hood and a bizarre carved mask so she couldn't see his face. He gave off an I'll-get-you-next-time kind of aura before melting into the fast fading light.

"What _happened_?" Sam's hair was still sopping when she stumbled in, muscles screaming, and practically threw Dean on the bed.

"Monster of the week," she explained breathlessly. "He must have done some sort of spell or something. Dean went crazy and tried to skewer me with a fence, so I had to take him out."

"Where's the monster?" Sam asked after pulling Dean into a more comfortable position.

"Got away," Claire said. "It was a guy, a big guy, wearing some sort of cloak thing and a freaky mask."

"A mask? A mask…" Sam trailed off thoughtfully and went to his computer, where he then sat for several hours perusing the interwebs for lore.

Dean woke with a groan the next morning

"How's your head?" Claire asked.

"Brilliant," he said. "Did I get in a fight with a wild boar?"

"Me, actually," she responded, with not a little pride. "I'll take that as a compliment."

"Why did you…" he frowned. "Oh. Um, yeah, sorry about that, I don't know what - "

"No biggie," she yawned. "Wasn't your fault, and you ended up with the more grievous injury anyway. I think I'll go grab us breakfast."

"Should you really go out alone?" Sam, who was now immersed in John's journal, said worriedly.

"I may be in my twenties, but I'm not a dude. I don't fit the profile, I'll be fine," she rolled her eyes.

"You could still fill the murder part of the - "

"Stop being so paranoid!"

"Alright, alright!"

She should have been more paranoid.

Not twenty minutes later she was being jumped on the way back from the deli down the street, a sack stuffed over her head, and then knocked out.

When she woke up the sack was off and the masked man was in front of her. If she had to guess, she would say they were in a warehouse of some kind.

"Who are you?" he asked. His voice was not raspy or evil, but sounded like honey.

"Who am _I? _Who are _you_?" she managed to say, trying to keep the fear from her voice.

"You expect me to tell you?" he laughed.

"It's fine, I know who you are," Claire said with as much confidence as she could muster.

"And who am I?" he asked.

_An idiot, _she wanted to say as her hands found the hilt of her still-hidden knife.

"A monster," she replied, and began sawing at her bonds.

"Then you're a monster hunter?" he said. "Fascinating. I've been wanting to meet one of you for many, many years."

"Just hunter, no need for the extra syllables," this time she tried to load it with sass.

He stood and walked towards me. "Your kind are perplexing. I have countless physical and mystical advantages over you. What makes you think you can beat me?"

"The fact that you don't know how to take someone captive properly, brainless," it was so ridiculously easy break through the rope she wondered if it had been rotting outside for ten years. With a flick of her wrist she broke through the last little bit and slashed at the man's mask. He stumbled back and she kicked him in the face. The mask flew off and he crawled back, pressing himself against the wall, weaponless, but, as it turned out, not helpless.

She groaned loudly. "You've got to be _kidding _me."

His eyes were like flecks of gold, his cheekbones cut from soft butter by Michelangelo himself. His lips were comparable to rose petals, his skin smooth and unmarked. In other words, he was the freaking Adonis.

"You've won," he said. "Congratulations. Now kill me."

She raised the knife, wanting so badly to slash his throat open, but… but…

"This is ridiculous," she said. He smirked infuriatingly.

"Why won't you kill me, sweet hunter girl?" he asked.

Her mouth moved soundlessly, and then she let out an aggravated growl and kicked the nearest crate angrily. Her phone was lying on the ground not two feet away and she picked it up, dialing Dean's number.

"Claire! Where have you been?" he snapped.

"Long story. Look, I'm in some warehouse, and I caught the monster, but I can't kill it," she said.

"Why the hell _not_?" he was practically shouting.

_Because he's ridiculously attractive and this is for sure a spell I mean there is no way I am that useless._

"I can't – you'll see, just get over here!" she hissed.

"Fine, but you had better have a good explanation," he hung up.

During the duration of the phone call the monster had pulled his shirt up to examine his bruised ribs, revealing a freaking eight pack.

_I'm going to cry, _is what she wanted to say, but "are you photoshopped?" is what came out.

"Pardon?" he asked.

Forty five torturous minutes later she heard a car pull up outside. She whipped out her phone.

"Don't come in!" she said quickly when Dean picked up. "That's you outside, right?"

"Yes, it is! And first it's help me, help me, I can't kill this monster, and now _don't come in?_"

"He'll only brainwash you again if you get within range, I've been thinking on this," she grit her teeth.

"So why don't _you _just kill him, you're a female!"

"That's just it!" her voice rose. "This guy's invincible! He doesn't need to be strong or smart because once you get in the vicinity there's no way anyone would want to hurt him! Dudes can't kill him because he can make them kill themselves and those around them, and chicks can't kill him because he's freaking _hot_!"

"You aren't killing him because he's _hot_?" Dean yelled.

"I don't think you understand! He is not _only _hot, he is Brad Pitt multiplied by five hundred thousand million!" Claire shouted back. "And this isn't free will, I am _so _under a spell right now!"

"I'm coming in there," Dean sounded pissed now.

"No," she said wildly. "No, I've – I've got it. Here, I'm going to stand on this pile of crates, out of the way, and you or Sam, stick your hand through the door, but _don't look_, and I'll tell you where to point your gun, and then you have to shoot him."

"This is venturing way beyond ridiculous," Dean said.

"_Just trust me!_"

"Okay, okay."

A second later, an arm appeared in the doorway. The monster's eyes widened.

"This isn't going to work," he said wildly. "I can still reach him from here."

"Can you?" the fear in his voice made me think not. And the lack of fear I felt made me confident. I looked at the arm with the gun at the end.

"Okay, point up," I said into the phone. "Good, now to the right – a little more – okay, that's too much – there! Try that."

Dean pulled the trigger, but the bullet went wide.

"No problem, we'll try again. Move to the left, yeah, good – okay now go," he shot again and the bullet hit the monster in the arm. It cried out and she did her best not to look at his beautiful, crafted-by-the-gods face…

"Closer," she said. "Left again, and up."

Third time's a charm, it seems, because the bullet found the monster's forehead.

"I cannot believe that worked," Claire said breathlessly.

"Holy crap! Did I get it?"

"Yeah, come in."

Sam and Dean stepped into the warehouse to admire their handiwork.

"He's not even that hot!" Dean sounded exasperated. Claire pursed her lips.

"He was hot before he was dead, I swear to God," she said. "Did we ever find out what he was?"

"No," said Sam. "But I seriously hope we never run into one again, because this entire day has been really friggin' weird."

"Preach," Dean agreed.

Claire never had a nightmare about a hunt ever again, but sometimes she dreamed of this monster and woke up with drool on her pillow.


	5. Chapter 5

**TIMESTAMP: POST SEASON 3**

It took less than a week for Claire and Sam to get into a screaming fight and split up. Sam was hell-bent on killing Lilith and avenging Dean, but Claire was feeling a bit more conservative. Of course she wanted Lilith dead. But she wanted no part in Sam's self-destructive methods.

_Funny. I haven't been doing much but self-destructing, either_, she took another swig of beer. The bartender was probably going to cut her off soon. Oh well. It was a testament to her bloodline that she was barely even drunk after about two hours of taste-testing pretty much every beverage in the joint.

Before anyone could talk to her, she dropped a wad of cash onto the counter and swaggered out the door. The city was still alive, even late at night, so she had to weave her way through several alleyways to find a crag she could be alone in.

She cracked her head against the wall and sunk to the floor, groaning.

_This is wrong. It's all wrong. Everything is so, so wrong._

Why had she let Sammy go? Blinded by grief and revenge he might be, but that was exactly why she should never have split up with him in the first place. He was a loose cannon, and he meant well, but if you took your eye off him… well, the road to hell is paved with good intentions and all that.

She let out a guttural laugh and reached into her pocket to take out her phone.

The first two numbers she tried were bust. If she were sober she probably wouldn't even have tried them, but as it was…

Third time's a charm, though.

"Ruby?" came Sam's voice from the other end of the line.

"You wish," she said. "Pay attention to the caller ID for Christ's sake. Normally it isn't my job to reprimand you on your lack of observational prowess but that's just sad."

"I was expecting someone else," he snapped.

"Yeah, I gathered."

"What do you want?"

She didn't say anything.

"Well?" he pressed.

"I'm Sorry, Sammy," she said quietly. Maybe he couldn't hear her. It didn't really matter. "I'm sorry I let him sell his soul. It should have been me. Dean is… was way more useful on a hunt or… or just in general and logically speaking it should be me who's dead right now. You could live without me."

He didn't reply for a while.

"Well," she said. "Sorry to bother you. You probably have important things to do with Ruby - "

"Claire," he interrupted. "I don't want – I can't…" he paused. "I couldn't live without you."

"That's sweet," she said.

"Stop," he said. "There isn't… there's no logic. Dean shouldn't be dead. You shouldn't be dead. Not that I want to be dead, but really, it should be me."

"Maybe it should, but it couldn't. It couldn't ever be you," tears were running down her face now, hot and salty in her mouth, but her voice was steady. "We've always gotta watch out for Sammy."

She should probably be worried that he hadn't told her she was drunk yet. Maybe she needed to start filtering what came out of her mouth more while she was in her right mind.

"Are you trying to make me feel worse about myself?" Sam's voice was dangerously quiet. "Because it's working."

"No. No, definitely not. Not _ever_," she said abruptly. "I'm trying to apologize for all of this, Sammy. I'm trying to tell you it's _my _fault. It's not yours. Nothing is your fault."

"Easy for you to say," Sam snorted, and she knew he was thinking about Jess, and mom, and maybe even dad. Guilt complexes were a Winchester thing.

"I'm serious," she said. "Sammy, if I were to die in like, I don't know… half an hour or so of alcohol poisoning – _that's _what I'd want you to know. That you need to stop blaming yourself for shit that you couldn't prevent."

"Alcohol poisoning – are you drunk?" he asked.

"Very much so," she said.

"Well you're also a hypocrite," he said.

"Whatever. Love you, Sammy. Keep in touch," she said. "Don't do anything too crazy, and keep an eye on Ruby."

"Wait - " but she'd already hung up.


	6. Chapter 6

**Sorry for the wait, I've been a-vacationing!**

**fact of the day: did you know that einstein would help out a family friend's daughter with her homework in exchange for jelly beans?**

**TIMESTAMP: SWAN SONG**

What she saw made her heart plummet. She'd know Sam was planning this. Cas had told her he'd failed. That was why she'd gone to the Sage. To be sure. To have a failsafe. _To be sure._

She looked at the metal stamp the Sage had given her. She thought about what Joshua had said to her, after reviving Sam and Dean. He'd told her that she was different, that Cas had been right – there was something special about her, too. He'd told her about Cain and how she was one of maybe a dozen viable candidates in the entire world to bear his Mark. She thought about Zachariah trying to hurt her and Sam to use them as leverage, about how she hadn't been affected.

_Do you really want to do this? _Said a little voice in her head. _You can never go back. And he's the devil – who knows if it will even work on him?_

But she had to do it. She couldn't let Sam jump into that hole, couldn't let him get stuck in the Cage for the rest of eternity, not if there was even a sliver of a chance that she could stop it.

She knew Sam had to die. But he didn't have to die like this.

"I've been to the deepest of pits and the highest of mountains, felt the coldest of ice and the hottest of flames. I've seen and understood and I have acted and my punishment is nigh," she recited under her breath.

Claire threw herself out of the stolen car, feet pounding against the dead grass. She almost screamed with pain as she felt the stamp burn white hot, imprinting the Mark into her palm.

Lucifer raised a hand and she flinched, still half expecting to explode into tiny little bits – an instinct reinforced by the fact that she had just sprinted past Bobby's dead body and what she could only assume was the remainder of Castiel – but nothing happened. He merely smiled and beckoned.

"The sister! Good, I've been expecting you," he said. "Now it's the entire family!"

"Claire!" Dean shouted. She saw him for the first time. He looked… scared. More scared than she'd ever seen him. And small. "Where have you _been_?"

"I've been thinking," she said, summoning every ounce of confidence, cockiness, sarcasm, lilt, calm she had in her body so her words sounded condescending. "I've been thinking long and hard and I've come to the conclusion that this entire thing is a big joke."

To her credit, both Lucifer and Dean looked appropriately stunned. She flashed an obnoxious grin and continued.

"I mean, Satan? The Devil? What the hell is all that about? No pun intended," she said. "What evidence have we seen that you are actually a threat to anyone, Mr. Lucifer? Precious little, I'd say."

"It's too bad you weren't here to see me slaughter your friend. And my – foolish brother," Lucifer smirked.

"Yes, it really is," Claire continued brusquely. "Now I will never have visual evidence, and no matter how hard you try and convince me that that really happened, I will not believe you. Not unless you caught it on tape by some miracle."

"Claire, what are you _doing_?" Dean snapped. She ignored him.

"You have really reached a whole new level of stupid, haven't you?" Lucifer laughed tightly.

"Have I? Am I _really _the stupid one here?" he was beginning to look annoyed. _Good._ "Let's think for a second. Which one of us has been forced to spend an entire year trying to get some random _mortal _to let himself become possessed by someone who is regarded by many as the embodiment of all evil? See, I never got myself chucked in a hole, so I've never had this problem."

Annoyance melted into intense irritation.

"Stupid is too kind a word for you," he amended. She tsked.

"But the kicker is that Sam only said yes in a last-ditch effort to kill you," Claire continued. "I kind of feel sorry for you, Luci. But you know, that whole plan could end up working out anyways. We're the heroic type, you know? Shit like this always works out in the end for us. Or at least, it does in movies."

He was now looking downright furious. If she didn't have a part to play she would be pissing her pants by now. Now all she could do was pray that he was unaware of her inability to be killed by angelic means.

"Yeah," she pressed. One more thing, to send him over the edge. "I do feel sorry for you, Lucifer. In fact, I pity you. When you were a kid, did you ever imagine you would become this… sliver of a sentient being?"

"Well," Satan pursed his lips. "Why don't I display exactly what this sliver is capable of?"

He theatrically raised his hand.

"No!" Dean screamed, but Lucifer snapped his fingers.

And he exploded.

She had succeeded in killing the devil. But she had killed Sam, too.

**note: if you are unfamiliar with the mark of cain – it is part of a story in the bible wherein cain, a son of adam and eve, kills his brother and as punishment is cursed with the 'mark of cain', which provokes the vengeance of god on anyone who attacks him. so basically if you try to kill him you die. anyways, that's what's goin on with claire here.**


End file.
